The cliche question all authors hate:
"Where do you get your ideas?"
The idea is the easy part. The idea is so easy to get, you can't give them away. I'm here to give them away, to share them, and invite you to recognize yours. We're all creative. Not all of us pay attention.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Idea Garage Sale: Adventure Book

Bookworm Annie picks up a battered old book of short stories at a used book store, off the "please take these I can't sell them table" out front. When she reads, she enters the story and becomes the main character. This means that she can use her extensive knowledge of literary convention to solve plot problems, and her annoyance with certain tropes to shake things up; but it also means that she can't skip the boring parts that the author zips the reader through with a transitional sentence. Being in a Western is a lot less exciting if you have to actually experience the ride from Point A to Point B! And the desert island story, face it, is excruciating.

She can't enter a story a second time, just reread it - no matter how embarrassing it now seems - but if she reads aloud to someone else, that person can come into the story with her.

Skills learned in the story remain learned, but a little muted, in the real world.

This one's written and in the attic somewhere. I didn't have the skill to pull it off when I first conceived it back in the mid-80s. You have to be able to carry the short stories (which of necessity include the boring parts, remember!) and tie them in to the reader's real-life situation, making a believable and satisfactory character arc.

I still think it's a viable concept, and I still like the ending, in which Annie intends to pass the book on to the friend she made in the course of the story, but instead it winds up with the bully who's been picking on her, and who could really benefit from that desert island experience.

But I haven't gotten any better at short forms, and having already written this book once I'm disinclined to write it again.

About Me

Author of the YA story about meeting your idols above, time travel fantasies 11,000 Years Lost, Switching Well, and A Dig in Time; Edgar-nominated mysteries The Ghost Sitter and The Treasure Bird; and 7 other middle-grade novels. Plus the stuff that's not published yet.

Glossary

Bruce, Dr. Bruce = our male cat, Thai's brother
Campaign = a connected series of role-playing adventures
Clovis = technology developed in the late Ice Age in the Americas, characterized by beautiful and elegant spear points; by extension, the people who used this technology
Con = Convention or conference, i.e. gathering of like-minded souls
Damon = My husband, Michael D. Griffin. No, D. does not stand for Damon.
D&D, AD&D, 3E, 3.5, 3.75, 4E = various iterations of Dungeons and Dragons, the original role-playing game
Fen = Plural of fan; refers specifically to individuals involved in the constellation of related fandoms that game, read comics, read science fiction and fantasy, etc.
Fortean, Forteana = Weird, inexplicable stuff
Game = Unless otherwise specified, table top roleplaying
LARP = Live-action role playing. Not the kinky stuff, the wholesome playing-make-believe-in-the-wood kind.
Megafauna = Big Animals. Usually, the mammalian megafauna of the Pleistocene
Mid-grade = in publishing, the grades between easy reader and high school level, i.e. variously between 7-14 depending on the kid and the publisher
Moby Dick, Moby Dent, Moby = the great white car
Pleistocene = Ice Age
Recreationist = LARPing with a serious purpose, such as re-fighting Civil War battles without casualties, to understand historical experience better
SCA = Society for Creative Anachronism, recreating the European middle ages the way they should have been
soulsucking day job = every day job I ever had; mostly they were perfectly good jobs. I just don't belong in one.
Speed = Caffeine. Yes, I'm that sensitive.
Table top roleplaying game = Make believe with rules, dice, paper, and pens.
Thai, Miss Thai = our female cat, Bruce's sister
WIP = Work in Progress
YA = Young Adult, in publishing. A flexible term that can refer to an audience as young as 13 and as old as 21.